HOW 25-YEAR-OLDS BECAME ADOLESCENTS

The always-dependable James Joyner is riffing on a number of topics closely related to sex and marriage. He happens to have hit on a disconnect which I started noticing early in my career, in this post commenting on the age of consent:

What strikes me as odd about the list is the wide divergence among the US states, with Iowa allowing 12-year-olds to give consent if they are married (an amazing concept in and of itself) and several states requiring people to reach 18, which is rather absurd in today’s society.

Of course, I’d also note how rapidly our mores have change with respect to these issues. There was a time, not that long ago, when it was perfectly normal for 13-year-old girls to be married and having babies. We’ve clearly prolonged adolescence–indeed, created the very idea–to the point where what was once normal is now practically bizarre.

First off, I’m amazed that my home state even countenances the idea of married 12-year-olds. It would have made 7th grade very interesting, to say the least. But James correctly notes that societal change has created a whole new category of people we don’t know what to do with.

Time was (and time was not that long ago) that 18 was considered “fully adult.” It wasn’t at all unusual for 18-year-olds to marry, because (hold on, there’s a shocking concept coming up) it wasn’t all that unusual for 18-year-olds to be finished with their educations and therefore available to assume adult responsibilities. There was one a time when it wasn’t expected that every high-school graduate would head off to college the following fall.

But let’s face it; in the long run, the American Dream is a pyramid scheme. If the chidren were supposed to live “better” than their parents, more education simply had to be part of the formula. So an ever-increasing number of kids were packed off to the ivy-covered walls of old Siwash U. Just between 1979 and 1997, the percentage of high-school bound college grads increased from 49% to 67%. (Source.) That’s a prety signficant increase in just 18 years.

So, how do you classify a college student, demographically? They fall into a gray area in between “youth” and “adult.” Whie they’re living on their own, they’re still net consumers of Mommy and Daddy’s income. And college sets up at least some sort of safety net to keep students from being directly exposed to “the real world.” Trust me, the concept of in loco parentis is not nearly as dead as as you may think. College thus functions as a kind of extended, expensive form of adolescence, a gradual acclimation to the realities of life as a functioning adult.

OF course, college takes longer than it used to. Six- or seven-year undergraduate experiences are not that unusual these days, and the number of college grads bound for graduate studies is also on the increase. Thus adolescence, which once ended around 18, when your body was fully adult, is now extended into the mid-twenties.

This may not seem like much of a problem, unless you work in Christian ministry. We almost universally preach abstinence from premarital sex–to 12- and 13-year -olds. But a societal expectation of 8-10 years of post-high school education creates problems. We teach kids about the wonders of human sexuality when they’re in 7th grade, but then expect that they will do absolutely nothing with this information for almost a decade and a half–that particular time period encompassing their most hormonal period of life.

Think I’m kidding? In 1960, the average age for a man at first marriage was 23; for a woman, about 20.2. By 1996, those number had changed to 27 and 25 respectively. A couple years back, People magazine ran a cover story on the “epidemic” of young marriage among the Hollywood crowd Their cover girl for the article was Reese Witherspoon– 23 years and a little under 3 months at the time she wed Ryan Phillippe. The average age of a woman at first marriage was below that until about 1984. In the early 60s, Ms. Witherspoon would have been considered a late marrier. But it’s considered curiously young for marriage now.

So we enter into our most libidinous phase of life around 14-15 or so (earlier now than it used to be), but marriage doesn’t become “acceptable” until the mid- to late-twenties. And, if you’re raised a Christian, you’re taught to refrain from any sort of sexual activity until then. Ten years is a long time to stand in a cold shower, my friends.

I have more thoughts, but I’m fighting off Allergy Eyes. I’ll come back to this later, once I’ve gouged my eyes out with a grapefruit spoon.